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L.A Noire was pretty good! Id love to see that technology used more.

And no ..

AC is not Overrated! Have you played ACII? They put in a lot of work in that game! First game about history that I actually liked! (I stay away from sword fighting games)

Skyrim isn't overrated. It is a fantastic game with excellent community support. The community is what is keeping it alive.

Overrated games are Call of Duty, Halo, Gears of War, and so on.

Despite all the things wrong with Skyrim, people still like it a lot, especially in that you can tailor the game to how you want to play, and remove or modify the things that bother you. And it's not like people pretend the game is flawless either, hell there's enough parodies on the 'net to acknowledge all of them. It's just the game really is one of a kind, compared to what all else is out there really. Something many developers haven't seemed to have been able to replicate successfully.

The GTA series being "overrated" is a bit silly too. They don't crap out their games, each one is constantly pushing the developers and the genre itself to new heights. You don't have to like the story to really appreciate that effort. Hell, I don't like Niko at all for example, but I played the crap out of the game start to finish, DLC and all just because the gameplay was such quality. I'm not even that big of a fan of the series either, as I didn't even touch the latest game until a year or so after it was out and $20 on Steam, playing it on a crappy AMD Athlon X2 with a crappy 20-25ish frame rate and all hahahah.

I saw a couple mentions of BF3, but that I do not understand either. If anything, BF3 has been rather underrated, constantly attacked, and so forth for not being the arcade-style FPS type that CoD has become. It's not perfect at all, but man... the multiplayer does come off a lot better I think. Solid graphics and animations, coupled with tight controls while being able to be played with decent frames per second, and encouraging team play... I just love that so much, as someone who's played the crap out of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Classes with designated roles, the roles not feeling like too big of a drag, getting XP for doing your job... makes for quite a different way to play entirely.

And as already noted: Goldeneye 007 was just the FPS of its time. Halo was another more modern success at having a great console FPS. Yes, there were better options on PC, but for console players? That was HUGE. Of course, as we've seen, Nintendo trying to cash in on the Goldeneye name doesn't really work by today's standards when we have many great options to choose from now... :p

While I don't agree with what you say, I'll defend to the death your right to say it. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare was a good game. It brought a much needed reboot to the flagging CoD brand. Any of the newer games I can't comment on since I haven't played them, but as a BF2 and CoD:MW1 owner, I'd have to question if you even played either game if you think they're the same game.

yes ive played both, and MW1 isnt high on that list for a reason.

it did rip from BF2, smaller maps and newer graphics and a headline for news single player, just like every MW after it.

I find mp on mw1 more enjoyable then its "successors" but all of them are extremely over-rated.

Did you even play those games that you claim are "Overrated"?. Some of the Final Fantasy games "could be" overrated. FFVII definitely wasn't overrated. I would know as i played it over and over and over. After FFX i got bored of the rest of the series. i wanted to retire being an ff gamer after that. The music is awesome(FFVII-FFX)

Ahh.... sorry if you didn't knew, but I ain't the author of the article

Halo by FAR. I want to punch people who claim Halo invented the FPS.

I think it popularised FPS on consoles. There was Goldeneye and Timesplitters paving the way but Halo just nailed the standards and really launched FPS on consoles and the genre has never looked back. While it may not be everyones cup of tea you can't deny the sanbox achievement and standards it brought. A lot more important than people give it credit for. Something even on the side, Bungie.net, that was way ahead of the rest and free.

Some of the Final Fantasy games "could be" overrated. FFVII definitely wasn't overrated. I would know as i played it over and over and over. After FFX i got bored of the rest of the series. i wanted to retire being an ff gamer after that. The music is awesome(FFVII-FFX)

Ask anyone who played I to VI. VII *is* overrated :p

The final fantasy entry needs to be changed to specifically say 7. As if there's an overrated FF game, it's that one. Also, the list seems to be missing half-life, the most overrated pc series in the history of gaming. Atleast it got halo right, though. That game has always been utter crap and not worthy of the praise the console kids who are bad at real shooters give it.

The only Elder Scrolls game that deserves a spot on an 'overrated' list is Morrowind, and will always be Morrowind.

It's not that great. :p

Morrowind was great with tons of mods.

But yeah the original game without any mod was kind of an average game at best.

Certainly an interesting list... Let's see (warning, personal opinions ahead).

Starts of with Assassin's Creed, generally considered the very repetitive and best part being that it spawned sequels, it's not high rated enough to be overrated in the first place, not the first one anyway.

Guitar Hero, GTA, and Gears of War, fair enough.

Can't say much for FF myself never liked JRPGs.

Sonic, I could see someone argue the older ones are overrated but most Sonic games between the 16 bit area and the latest are generally considered crap from what I know?

Call of Duty 4, had it just said CoD I would have agreed but CoD4 in particular was great when it first came out and nailed a modern day shooter after all the WW2 fatigue, fairly rated as far as I'm concerned.

Goldeneye 007, it was amazing for it's time and while it hasn't exactly passed the test of time it's often held in high regard, and rightly so in my opinion.

Skyrim, yes, just like oblivion, it's fun but it's not as awesome as it's often made out to be (though I'm sure many enjoy it all the same).

Halo, eh, no. Great games. The guy who wrote the article doesn't even really seem to have played it (playstation guy he says) claiming that all there is to the story is the one arc of destroying the Halo and all rooms looked the same. Even just looking at the first game there is a lot more to the story than just the and goal and there is a lot of variety in the level design...

Also, a top ten overrated videogames list and there isnt a single half-life game in there? Hmmm :p

Lists like this are so subjective - everyone has their own opinion. I personally think Crysis series (as a game, not a display showcase for graphics), any Call of Duty, Battlefield, WoW should be included in the list :p

Of course lists like this are subjective, but I agree 100% with Halo. Halo has always been a terrible game (imo). I'll give it that it's one of the few games I played co-op on and had some fun doing so, but I got bored after one iteration of the game. In fact, I have a copy of Halo 3 and Halo Reach, both that I got for free, both that I've never touched. I'm not the biggest gamer in the world, I have a few others I need to play that I've been putting off, but Those I'll never get to.

Then again, to me, I really enjoy the Guitar Hero games. I typically play either one of my many Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, or NHL 13. I only play like 5-10 hours of games a week though.

Compared to CoD, Halo is very underrated. The story in them, background, etc, is nothing short of brilliance. You see very small evidence of the backstory everywhere, and it's really testament to how much work has been put into those games.

The gameplay is very generic-shooter, and while some excuse can come from the fact that Halo invented the modern shooter, anything more would be a little tryhard in my opinion.

I think Battlefield 3 deserves that title more than anything. All it did was converge the Battlefield and Bad Company brands. In other words, CoD with bigger maps.

Compared to CoD, Halo is very underrated. The story in them, background, etc, is nothing short of brilliance. You see very small evidence of the backstory everywhere, and it's really testament to how much work has been put into those games.

The gameplay is very generic-shooter, and while some excuse can come from the fact that Halo invented the modern shooter, anything more would be a little tryhard in my opinion.

I think Battlefield 3 deserves that title more than anything. All it did was converge the Battlefield and Bad Company brands. In other words, CoD with bigger maps.

Yeah, CoD is massively overrated as well, but I still like it more than Halo. I prefer the more realistic feel.

Nothing beat the old days of CS1.6 though. :(

Battlefield 3 is a great game, it's not original but you can't call it overrated just because it's selling well. Tell me what game offers better infantry/vehicle combat? The people who say BF3 is crap I bet you never played BF1942, BF2 or BF2142 . The Bad Company games were crap.

COD4 no to that as well, it had some flaws for sure but it really pushed console gaming multiplayer into overtaking the multiplayer experience on the PC. It has a really solid Engine, some great online game modes and a good single player campaign. The COD games after that are certainly overrated.

GTA, Assassin?s Creed, Guitar Hero and Gears of War. I get why they are on the list. They have some good ideas but they just get boring.

Halo: Combat Evolved was the best FPS up to that point, the writer just dumbs down the story to try and fit his point. Who really cared about the level designs, some of them were bad but the ones out on Halo were visually brilliant.

The PC gaming was way ahead of console gaming technically. But a lot of people didn't have access to decent computers until they became cheaper in the mid 00's so a lot of people didn't have the chance to play counter strike or half life.

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Yeah, CoD is massively overrated as well, but I still like it more than Halo. I prefer the more realistic feel.

Nothing beat the old days of CS1.6 though. :(

I don't generally like posting attacks, but I can't help but get infuriated when people call CoD realistic. CS and CoD are nowhere near realism. Even BF2 isn't that realistic, though it is a major step in the right direction.

That's not so say CS and CoD are bad games - they're just NOWHERE NEAR realism.

Battlefield 3 is a great game, it's not original but you can't call it overrated just because it's selling well. Tell me what game offers better infantry/vehicle combat? The people who say BF3 is crap I bet you never played BF1942, BF2 or BF2142 . The Bad Company games were crap.

COD4 no to that as well, it had some flaws for sure but it really pushed console gaming multiplayer into overtaking the multiplayer experience on the PC. It has a really solid Engine, some great online game modes and a good single player campaign. The COD games after that are certainly overrated.

GTA, Assassin?s Creed, Guitar Hero and Gears of War. I get why they are on the list. They have some good ideas but they just get boring.

Halo: Combat Evolved was the best FPS up to that point, the writer just dumbs down the story to try and fit his point. Who really cared about the level designs, some of them were bad but the ones out on Halo were visually brilliant.

Excuse me, but BF1942 was my first PC FPS ever. BF2 I played on both the Xbox and PC. Suffice it to say, I grew up with the Battlefields. Now, Battlefield 3's largest map on launch had its flags a full 300 metres apart, and had only five flag points in Conquest "large". It is by no means a true Battlefield game.

You ask me what game offers better infantry combat? I say CoD. BF2 bests BF3 in every other area, from vehicles, to maps, to tactics and teamplay. BF3 was a game made for the CoD generation of gamers and it shows in every step of the development other than the engine.

Bad Company 2, in comparison, had larger maps than BF3 (unless you count that open space around the points that only a sniper or tank ever bothers venturing into). The vehicles were tight and underwhelming, but otherwise the overall gameplay was far superior on select maps. DICE boasts an engine capable of streaming continents, and they compact all the maps into tiny locations, and colour grade everything to the point of it being eye wrenchingly bad.

The reason I think BF3 is largely overrated is precisely because I've played the former games so religiously. It was a bigger letdown than Brink or Homefront to me.

10. Assassin?s Creed

09. Any Guitar Hero Game

08. Any Grand Theft Auto Game

07. Gears of War

06. Final Fantasy

05. Any Sonic the Hedgehog Game

04. Call of Duty 4

03. GoldenEye 007

02. Skyrim

01. Halo

Article...

:/ :s :wacko: :rofl: :|

Skyrim being #2 is downright wrong. I am not going to say it's the most innovative game, but it's not overrated. I really disagree with that.

I also disagree with Halo. Halo 4 looks fun and if they are talking about the original Halo, well it's old.

Call of Duty 4, yes I agree with this.

When I think of the "most hyped" i tend to think more along the lines of when the developer over-sold the concept and the game simply did not deliver. The games that come to my mind are:

1. Doom 3 - I loved this game, but the initial "talk-up" id did at the first E3 showing ended up being a lot of hot air. They were talking about a fully destructible level design but they ended up with highly-scripted changes and not anything that the player could really cause or effect in anyway. I still loved this game more than others but I think it was over-hyped.

2. The last couple of Peter Molyneux games have been WAY overhyped mostly by him. Fable and the Black & White games were all over-hyped in that this "legend" of gaming was throwing out concepts that his games just not deliver.

3. Spore - I don't really need to discuss at all.

I think I disagree with just about every game on this article's list being there. I just don't think that the producers created the over-hype. In some cases I think that the players created the hype but I don't see any of them as being necessarily over-hyped. In other words, I think "over-hype" is an over-statement.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

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On opening Backup, you can select internal storage folders on your phone to backup to the ZimaBoard 2's storage, and although this is constantly scanned, the backup action itself must be manually triggered. There is an option to allow foreground backup (last image in the above gallery), but this basically means the queued backup gets triggered when you manually open the app. Benchmarking SATA PCIe 3.0 X4 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 2.5 GbE was well within acceptable ranges. Writes were generally better on the SSD RAID mirror. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 2.5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 2.5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. Thermals Top PCIe card SATA HDDs Next, I measured some hotspots while playing content on Plex. It's fair to say this will perform better than a NAS that is enclosed in a metal or plastic case, as almost everything storage-wise is exposed! Anyway, the ZimaBoard 2 did not break a sweat with Plex streaming or disk benchmarks. ZimaOS Factory Reset ZimaOS does not include a factory reset option. Instead, you have to download the ZimaOS image and flash it to the eMMC manually. The flashing process is shown in the above gallery. The steps to do so are listed below: Download the ZimaOS image here; Open BalenaEtcher (Run as Administrator) and select the image; Select your inserted USB drive (min 8 GB) Flash to it; Connect your USB drive, monitor, keyboard, USB hub (optional), mouse (optional), and network cable (recommended) to the ZimaBoard 2; Connect power and press F11 continuously; Select your USB drive starting with UEFI in the boot device menu; Press Enter on the Install ZimaOS option; Select /dev/mmcblk0 (MMC) flash drive as target; Confirm with (three times) to wipe the target disk; Wait a couple of minutes while ZimaOS installs; Remove the USB drive and confirm with a reboot; Your ZimaBoard 2 has been factory reset. However, you don't have to stick with ZimaOS, in fact the company also offers official CasaOS images, that are based on Debian; or as they say themselves, put anything you want on this "hackable single board server" it's up to you. Conclusion I had a lot of fun putting this together. I've custom-built all my own PCs and servers since the 90s, and this is the first time I have had to put a NAS together. Even if the actual base ZimaBoard 2 was already a completed build, it still feels pretty custom. I just wish that IceWhale Technology included a getting-started guide in the box for the Start Kit, which would have really completed this kit. Instead, I had to search for the official video on the YouTube channel to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong. So who is this for? Definitely the hobbyist who is comfortable building their own PC and servers. It also has a much smaller footprint than its nearest equivalent (in terms of specs), like the Beelink Me Pro, which is another NAS I will be testing soon. Although the Beelink does not come with the PCIe 3.0 X4 expansion, the ZimaBoard 2 Starter Kit suddenly looks to be a great bargain, even if it only offers the two 3.5-inch bays over the four in the other example. It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N150 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the ZimaBoard 2 is intended for, media streaming and backup. It also looks like the IceWhale Technology staff are quite active in the official forums helping people with issues they come across with ZimaOS and the devices, peer support seems to be good as well, I was quickly able to find why I was not able to create a new Storage Pool in ZimaOS v1.6.1 even though that is quite a serious bug, hopefully it will be fixed in the next update. If you are comfortable with the command line and Docker, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. This was my first time with ZimaOS. It seems a bit barebones in comparison to the likes of Synology DSM, TOS, and UGOS, but it has a ton of apps to get you started with your home or small business NAS. Where to buy As of publishing, IceWhale Technology is running a discount of up to 5% for the Starter Kit. If you opt to get just the ZimaBoard 2 itself, it does come with a SATA Y-Cable, so you will be able to connect up to two 3.5-inch HDDs to it. ZimaBoard 2 1668 Starter Kit for $534.50 on Amazon US (was $548.60) ZimaBoard 2 832 Starter Kit for $372.88 on Amazon US (was $390.60) Zimaboard 2 1668 (16GB+64GB) for $419.90 on Amazon US Zimaboard 2 832 (8GB+32GB) for $359.90 on Amazon Disclosure: IceWhale Technology provided a free sample without any editorial input or review pre-approval. Good to know The Amazon link is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. 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    • It's in the Insider's group so yes it's technically beta, though these days it's hard to see much of a difference unless you opt for the most extreme beta builds, which I don't. When I moved here from the Release Preview channel I did so primarily because I wanted to see how well the restored taskbar functionality (restored from Win10, and earlier) is working and whether it was time to finally abandon SAB--and it is--working fine, so far. Not as polished as SAB, but it'll do for me.
    • I've been using MWB Premium for a number of years so that along with Windows updates and updated browser should be fine. Thanks for that.
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